Edo Ghosts

Short series about vengeful female ghosts from Edo-period Japan. All were done in photoshop and are 8x12. The full stories about these ghosts can easily be found online.

The Blind Woman ghost. While traveling through the mountains, a man stayed at an inn for the night. While staying there, he heard beautiful singing coming from one of the other rooms. He knew for sure it was a beautiful woman and decided he would have her. That night he snuck in and had his way with her, which she seemed to be quite happy about. The next morning he found that she was a blind, ugly woman. He decided to get rid of her by pushing her off one of the mountain's cliffs. A year later, he stayed at a shrine in the mountains only to find her vengeful spirit.

The ghost Okiku. Okiku used to be a woman who worked as a servant in a rich man's house. Nearly every day the man would ask her to go to bed with him and every day she would refuse. Finally fed up with it, the man decided to blackmail her by hiding one of his expensive plates. Later he asked her to count his plates. Shocked and horrified that there were only nine plates when there should be ten, she approached him and told him the number. He was willing to "forgive her" if she came to bed with him. Once again, she refused. The man's answer to this was throwing her down the well in his backyard. Okiku's spirit rose as a vengeful ghost. She would haunt him by quietly counting to nine, but instead of saying ten she would scream bloody murder and then vanish. Okiku haunted him every night.

The ghost Oiwa. Once a beautiful woman, Oiwa was poisoned by her unfaithful husband in order for him to marry his mistress. However, the poison didn't kill her instantly and instead gave her a disfigured face and a slow, painful death. Haunting her former husband, Oiwa's spirit would often embody lanterns that would begin to catch on fire, revealing a disfigured face.